That Freak Show is not the joyous gay party it aspires to be is a testament to squandered opportunities. For all the aces up its sleeve, Freak Show never quite lets its freak flag fly.

It’s a fun effort in a genre that hasn’t gotten much of a workout recently, and that’s worthwhile in itself.

The narrative is so diffuse that putting together the pieces is beside the point. You feel no closer to knowing or understanding the Laurents, and their collective unpleasantness gives one little reason to want to. It’s a skilled ratcheting of discomfort – but to what end?

Nicolai Fuglsig’s film does a nice job of capturing the fish-out-of-water nature of the American combatants. Chris Hemsworth is suitably heroic and Michael Shannon suitably intense. But if this movie was the only context you had for the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, you’d walk out of the theater thinking that we won a quick war without suffering any casualties, that American gusto and bravery saved the day.

Den of Thieves isn't a masterpiece by any means, but it's fun, exciting and hard-boiled, and the actors are doing solid work.

Forever My Girl is a bad movie, pure and simple. And pure and simple is just how writer and director Bethany Ashton Wolf likes it.

Annette Bening is so good in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool that it makes up for a story that’s slighter than it should be.

If you’re making a movie about someone with exacting standards, Day-Lewis is your man. Yet what’s so exciting about Anderson and Day-Lewis’ collaborations is that while the actor is always superb, they’re very much the director’s movies. They feed off of one another, creating collaborative works that show off each other’s strengths.

Paddington 2 is a winsome confection. More than just a movie, it’s a necessary mood corrective, a temporary escape hatch from negativity. The world does indeed feel right in the company of this kind and polite little bear.

The Commuter doesn’t stand above or below most of Neeson’s action-hero fare. But you dependably get what you pay for.

The title Acts of Violence has less to do with the storyline of the movie it graces and more about what’s perpetrated against the audience watching it.

This is a story about taking risks, about putting the good of the country before your own. It sounds corny and clichéd, but even in Spielberg’s hands it doesn’t come off that way.

The film’s intentions are noble enough, but its story doesn’t always live up to them.

It's not a total wash. Shaye's performance is reliably good and the sequences set in The Further (the netherworld of the "Insidious" films) have a kicky charge.

It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it (or Jackman, Efron and the rest can, anyway). And Barnum would have loved it.

It’s a lazy, thoroughly unoriginal bit of storytelling, but it has just enough cheeky humor and bass-thumping action scenes to be a potential crowd-pleaser.

Alexander Payne has a lot of fun — and has some serious things to say — in Downsizing, a film that goes from fascinating to sometimes merely functional, but never truly loses its way.

Call Me by Your Name is a lush, heartbreakingly beautiful film about first love, but also the glories of youth, when everything is new and any number of paths open before you.

Most of the complexity in the film comes from its structure, as we go back and forth in time with Bloom. It’s an entertaining journey, especially if you like to listen.

It's sometimes compelling, sometimes frustrating, and usually chaotic.

Everyone here has been better, and funnier, in other things. This is a lazy story, wholly dependent upon the likability of its cast which, while considerable, isn’t enough to make it worth the trouble.

There is a hollowed-out gravitas to his Getty, the perfect example of someone for whom having almost literally everything is just not enough, and Plummer captures this magnificently. No matter how he got there, it’s impossible now to imagine All the Money in the World without him.

While Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a good movie and a worthy entry, it would have been stronger if Johnson didn’t telegraph those new directions before leading us to them.

An affectionate documentary.

The dialogue is agony.

Thelma treads the line between the psychological and supernatural, gracefully at first, and then with increasing abandon.

The Shape of Water is a fantasy, a myth, a fairy tale, all that.

You don’t lose yourself in the film the way you might like, but there is never a second in which Oldman is not riveting.